• druckbleistift@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Can you expand on that or provide some resources to learn about biochar. I’ve never really heard about it before.

    • bentropy@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Okay, in some ways bio char itself is like the regular charcoal we know from BBQs and the manufacturing process can be quite similar. But like most things, it’s a very complex topic, therefore, I’ll only give a very rough overview for now but I’ll also share some links to further information 👍 • While charcoal is mostly made from valuable wood, bio char can be made from every form of biomass, meaning it can be made from every form of biomass waste.
      • During the manufacturing process, the chemical carbon in the biomass is put into a form that is stable for several thousand years, so unless the bio char is burned again it can’t reenter the atmosphere. • Each ton of bio char produced using plant based waste is equivalent to 2.6 tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide captured by those plants. • The manufacturing process generates a small amount of base-load energy which can be, depending on the size of the facility, enough for several hundreds of households. • The end product can be used to revitalize the extremely degraded soils we’re fighting in industrial agriculture right now.

      Tl:dr we (indirectly) take something very bad from the atmosphere, generate useful energy with it and then store it within our dead soils to revitalize it.

      It is not THE solution but I think it’s a feasible improvement.

      I’m happy to answer more questions… here are some links ✌️

      https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/biochar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar